


A Wind Just Passing Through

by bananasandroses (achuislemochroi)



Series: Whofic [67]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: 1X13 (The Parting of the Ways), 2X13 (Doomsday), 3X00 (The Runaway Bride), 3X02 (The Shakespeare Code), 3X11 (Utopia), 3X13 (Last of the Time Lords), 4X00 (Voyage of the Damned), Angst, F/M, Melancholy, Ninth Doctor Era, Season/Series 03, Tenth Doctor Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 06:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8654110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achuislemochroi/pseuds/bananasandroses
Summary: He tries not to see everyone through a Rose-shaped prism, but it’s a losing battle.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The original version of this was written in 2007 for [adonde_fui](adonde_fui.livejournal.com) as part of the [time_and_chips](time_and_chips) _Secret Pilotfish Exchange_. My prompt was: “Fic, Ten/Rose, your choice”.
> 
> The title comes from the Runrig song _The Dancing Floor_. All italicised dialogue is from episodes.

_“Have a good life. Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life.”_

You had given little thought to how it would be for Rose when she saw you appear as if from nowhere on that Norwegian beach. How, for her, it could bring back an unwanted, unloved memory: Emergency Programme One and the nightmare of the Daleks, the Game Station, and losing Jack.

_“And I'm not gonna see you again. Not like this. Not with this daft old face.”_

Is that, you wonder, how you came through, that horrendous afternoon? A thin and insubstantial hologram; a flickering, haunting image in a thousand different shades of blue? You don’t know, and never will. You hope she sees herself as you do: the fantastic woman who had been your only thought through a regeneration of fire and pain.

_“I was dying. To save my own life I changed my body. Every single cell, but... it's still me.”_

You had put no thought at all into the potential consequences, because to you they hadn‘t mattered. Nothing had mattered, nothing at all except the raw, desperate need to see her face again one last time. You wanted to assuage the pain and guilt a little by verbalising, at last, what you felt for her and allowing her the chance to do the same. In doing so you would, at last, have made it real. But you messed it up, that one time it really mattered, and now you have to live with knowing she isn't, won't ever be, certain how you feel for her.

_“If it’s my last chance to say it … Rose Tyler …”_

Everything and everyone you care for, everyone you’ve loved, has left you; as a consequence, you believe you're cursed to wander the universe alone for ever. Sometimes you think the curse must show; it would explain why even Donna Noble, someone you’ve known a few hours who couldn’t know everything of which you’re capable, is scared enough of what could happen she won’t travel with you.

_“Her name was Rose.”_

When Martha Jones comes aboard, you take too long to realise your emotional state means you're in no fit state to deal fairly with her. Asking her to travel with you is a mistake that rebounds, painfully, on both of you. When she compounds that mistake by falling in love with you, it makes a bad situation worse. She isn’t Rose, she cannot hope to be to you what Rose was; she’s on a hiding to nothing, and there’s nothing you can do to help her.

_“Rose would know. That friend of mine, Rose. Right now she’d say exactly the right thing.”_

And then there’s Jack: the impossible made fact. You’ve treated him terribly, and you know it, but he is everything your Time Lord training taught you to fear: a fixed point in time and space. He asks about Rose, of course, and you cannot bear to tell him the truth. Yet despite everything you did to him, he proves yet again how loyal a friend and ally he is; you’d never have survived The Year That Never Was without his emotional strength to support you. He won’t travel with you, either, but _that_ is no more than you deserve.

_“She’s gone, Jack. She’s not just living on a parallel world, she’s_ trapped _there. The walls have closed.”_

Wherever you go and whatever you do, nothing ever seems to happen except death or destruction. After your latest adventure, where you lost Astrid to stardust, it's possible you will, at last, learn that you cannot make attachments to anyone or anything. For you, to do so is just tempting fate. What was it you said when trying to bring Astrid back into a solid corporeal form?

_“I can do anything.”_

Oh, if only that were true.

You travel alone now. This is despite the fact there are plenty of people out there who would go with you if only you would ask. But the one you want, the only one you ever wanted to hold your hand, is gone and you’ve no interest in anyone else. You’re tired and lonely, and every day without her is a waking nightmare, but you hide it all behind a façade of mind-numbing cheerfulness and carry on, regardless; there’s nothing else you can do.

But as you begin the TARDIS dematerialisation sequence, off to Chaos knows where, your thoughts fly as they so often seem to do these days to the Rose who now blooms in half-familiar soil. The one thing on which you can focus is what you had once thought would be the last words of yours she would ever hear. Odd as it might seem they still fit, even with your rudeness and the teeth you are still getting used to:

_“Have a good life. Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life.”_


End file.
